you are not as other human women are, and that he who would
treat you as such, must suffer; that was the gist of it."

"Some might be content to suffer for such as I," she answered with quiet
sweetness. "Even Bastin and Bickley may be content to suffer in their
own little ways."

"You know that is not what I meant," I interrupted angrily, for I felt
that she was throwing reflections on me.

"No; you meant that you agreed with Bickley that I am not quite a woman,
as you know women."

I was silent, for her words were true.

Then she blazed out into one of her flashes of splendour, like something
that takes fire on an instant; like the faint and distant star which
flames into sudden glory before the watcher's telescope.

"It is true that I am not as your women are--your poor, pale women,
the shadows of an hour with night behind them and before. Because I am
humble and patient, do you therefore suppose that I am not great? Man
from the little country across the sea, I lived when the world was
young, and gathered up the ancient wisdom of a greater race than yours,
and when the world is old I think that I still shall live, though not in
this shape or here, with all that wisdom's essence burning in my breast,
and with all beauty in my eyes. Bickley does not believe although he
worships. You only half believe and do not worship, because memory holds
you back, and I myself do not understand. I only know though knowing
so much, still I seek roads to learning, even the humble road called
Bastin, that yet may lead my feet to the gate of an immortal city."

"Nor do I understand how all this can be, Yva," I said feebly, for she
dazzled and overwhelmed me with her blaze of power.

"No, you do not understand. How can you, when even I cannot? Thus for
two hundred and fifty thousand years I slept, and they went by as a
lightning flash. One moment my father gave me the draught and I laid me
down, the next I awoke with you bending over me, or so it seemed. Yet
where was I through all those centuries when for me time had ceased?
Tell me, Humphrey, did you dream at all while you were ill? I ask
because down in that lonely cavern where I sleep a strange dream came to
me one night. It was of a journey which, as I thought, you and I seemed
to make together, past suns and universes to a very distant earth. It
meant nothing, Humphrey. If you and I chanced to have dreamed the same
thing, it was only because my dream travelled to you. It is